New Delhi: Stating Moscow is trying to starve his country’s cities into submission, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that continuing the invasion would exact a toll on Russia for “generations”.
Zelenskyy accused the Kremlin in an overnight video address of deliberately creating “a humanitarian catastrophe”, AP reported.
The Ukrainian President once again appealed to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to meet with him to prevent more bloodshed.
The remarks came after Russia held a mass rally in support of its bogged-down forces.
Zelenskyy said the 200,000 people reported to have attended the rally was similar to the number of Russian forces deployed to Ukraine.
He added the event in Moscow on Friday illustrated the stakes of the largest ground conflict in Europe since World War II.
“Picture for yourself that in that stadium in Moscow there are 14,000 dead bodies and tens of thousands more injured and maimed,” Zelenskyy said.
“Those are the Russian costs throughout the invasion,” he added.
Putin on his part showered praise on the Russian military forces during the flag-waving rally.
“We have not had unity like this for a long time,” he told the crowd.
The rally on Friday took place on the anniversary of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
The event included patriotic songs such as “Made in the U.S.S.R.,” with the opening lines “Ukraine and Crimea, Belarus and Moldova, it’s all my country.”
The development takes place as fighting raged on multiple fronts in Ukraine more than three weeks after Russia’s invasion on February 24.